Baslinux mailing list

[Lee Forrest <lforrestster AT gmail.com>]

On Wed, Jan 31, 2007 at 08:32:27AM +1100, Ron Clarke wrote:

[delete]

Ron said:

> > > And in my view, the best DOS prog that I would like to see
> > > ported to Linux is Arachne.
> >
> > wikipedia:
> >
> > Arachne is a full-screen [24]Internet suite containing a     
> > graphical [25]web browser, [26]email client, and dialer.     
> > It primarily runs on [27]DOS based operating systems, but    
> > includes a few preliminary builds for [28]Linux. Arachne was 
> > originally created by Michael Polak (under the label xChaos  
> > software, later renamed to [29]Arachne Labs) in the [30]C    
> > language and compiled using [31]Borland C++ 3.1 compiler,    
> > but since been released under the [32]GPL as Arachne GPL.    
[delete]
>
> > Have to say that doesn't interest me a bit. I don't like
> > monolithic apps like that.
>
> Oh, it is not monolithic. :)

Yes it is. "Monolithic" means that one is composed of a bunch of
seperate apps.

There is, for example, no reason at all for a web browswer to have
anything to do with email. Mine doesn't.

> Size of the zipped download is just over 1 MB. Unzipped, it
> can fit on a floppy. There is even a boot floppy version -
> single floppy disk, includes a DOS, so it can be booted by
> any PC to run in RAM.

That's good, but size doesn't have anything to do with whether an
app is monolithic or not.

> It is actually a rather large collection of parts being
> kept in the game by a kernel CORE.EXE.

Why? I don't need any help from my browser to do email.

> The very best feature of Arachne, in my opinion, is that it is
> so configurable and customisable.

No more so than the apps would be seperately. Probably less so.

> All of the GUI is in html files,

> most of the functionality seems to be in scripts that call
> the CORE.EXE, and there are so many add-ons and "plug-ins"
> available that it can handle anything that DOS can handle. And
> you can choose your own email clients, editors, multi-media
> applications, diallers, you name it.

I already do that, and I don't need any help from my browser.

> And she can also perform as a graphical desktop for DOS and
> its applications.

Graphical desktop environments (DEs) are a waste of resources. I
use a textmode desktop environment written in bash that both runs
in X and controls X. Much smaller than any graphical desktop.
Faster, too. Extremely easy to configure.

(It's just a menu tree. You make your selection by entering numbers.)

And my DE doesn't need the help of a browser.

> > I want my web browser to be a web browser and my email client
> > to be an email client and my internet connections to be done
> > by a seperate utility. The html-rendering part I'd like to be
> > a seperate utility, as well as the image-displaying part.
>
>   That's what you get with Arachne. :)

Quite the opposite. I have everything and more than Arachne has, without
Arachne. _My_ DE uses bash, not a web browswer. It _controls_ my webtools,
it isn't controlled by them.

I can change browsers at will. You can't. 

[delete]

Lee

-- 
BasicLinux: Small is Beautiful 
http://www.basiclinux.com.ru